Five-year-old boy from Luhansk Oblast finally reunites with family
A frame from the film by Dmytro Komarov (Photo:@Serhiy Hayday)
The story of a five-year-old boy from the town of Rubizhne, Luhansk Oblast, who became one of the heroes of Ukrainian journalist Dmytro Komarov’s documentary “The Year,” has received a happy ending.
During the filming of his documentary at a hospital in Severodonetsk, Komarov met a boy named Petrovych. The boy said that his mother had disappeared, and his father had earlier left for work. Together with his older brother, they had lived alone for a week until the Ukrainian military found them and evacuated from Rubizhne.
The boy told Komarov that while he and his brother were sleeping, a missile hit the house and totally destroyed it. In the documentary, the boy asks the journalist if he will take him and his brother to their father.
After the documentary’s premiere on the anniversary of the full-scale invasion, Luhansk regional governor Serhiy Hayday shared on Facebook the continuation of the boy’s story.
According to the governor, Rubizhne in April was a “hellhole.” The town was divided in half. Ukraine controlled the Pivdennyi district, from which people were evacuated.
In late April, while patrolling the town, members of the Ukrainian National Guard found two boys lacking adult supervision. The boys said that their mother had disappeared. The children were taken to the Severodonetsk hospital, where they were given psychological help.
It turned out that the children’s father was in the city of Poltava, and the children were brought to him the next day. Meanwhile, their mother’s fate remained unknown.
“But in a few days, a woman came to the position of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Rubizhne,” Hayday said.
“What she said was beyond belief... In early April, the orcs (sic) stopped her on the street, and actually abducted her, and kept her in an organized prison in one of the captured administrative buildings for several days. By blackmailing her kids, they forced her to spy on the positions of Ukrainian defenders.”
He added that the woman had been beaten and abused, but later released.
“When she returned home, she didn’t find her kids, so she decided to walk to Severodonetsk,” Hayday said.
“On the way, the woman met servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
”The family has now been reunited, Hayday added.
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